HOW A FAMOUS RED MANIPULATED U.S. MEDIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605770001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 7, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/07/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605770001-9
ED HUMAN EVENTS
ARTICLE APP
N PAGE Aa- 7 September 1985
How a Famous Red Manipulated U.S. Media
By PETER SAMUEL
"Journalist" Wilfred Burchett said in personal
letters to his VamW that was on the payroll of at
-least one Comtatbt government and received
military. ptiq from another. These revela-
tion&htve beta deikAnsuaI1a by Politics Prof.
Robert 11 anae'ot' .University, the first per-
son to study {*-Vesseaiai papers since his
death in 19 r-MsenC_'it- fines appear in the
August 19Wi a of-Quadrant magazami,
In a letter from Peking dated April 16, 1951, ,
Burchett wrote his father: "I don't have to worry
about finances here.... I afi relieved of financial
cares and given facilities.... What, I need comes to
me, from food and writing paper, and typewriter
ribbons; I [just] sign for it.... I would do anything
at all for their [Chinese Communist] people and
government."
Burchett was as good as his word. He followed
Chinese Communist troops into North Korea and
became a leading propagandist against U.S. and
allied troopg, through writings and broadcasts. He
specialized in crafting atrocity-.stories, including
the infamous charges of the use of germ warfare by
the United States, allegations of torture against
POWs and deliberate bombing of civilians.
The Americans' "destruction of Korea was
worse than anything,.the Nazis did [in] Po'and,"
reported Burchett. They were involved in a
"monstrous slaughter of scores of thousands of
Korean civilians in cold-blood" and displayed
"master.race arrogance.'t
According to one Burchett dispatch: "American
troops turned machine guns on demonstrators and
hurled hand grenades into their midst.". In efforts
by American authorities to persuade POWs to
desert. the . North Korean regime, "the torture
rooms, the gas chambers, the steam-heat rooms,
the branding irons and the tattooers' needles and
the gallows were kept busy," reported Burchett.
In fabricating these atrocity stories, Bur-
chett relied mostly on his imagination, fired
by a deep hatred of Western society, but he
also made use of "confessions" extracted by
force from allied POWs.
American Lt.. James Stanley told in a sworn
statement of how a confession to dropping germ
warfare containers over North Korea was extracted
from him after four months of interrogation and
torture culminating in a mock firing squad and "a
last chance to confess."
Burchett was "an active participant" in the pro-
duction and distribution of "confessions" ex-
tracted from- USAF Lieutenants Quinn, Enoch,
O'Neal and Kniss. Kniss said Burchett personally
threatened him with "drastic measures" when he
said the confessions were fake and forced, in the
presence of two French visitors.
. Derek Kinne, an English POW in North- Korea,
called Burchett a "son of a bitch" for his'propa-
ganda talk and was- told by Burchett, "I could have
you shot." An hour after the incident, two guards
came and took him away, saying he had a bad at-
titude "in the way I'd. talked to Comrade Bur-
chett." He was kept in solitary confinement for
over a year, beaten daily and constantly pressed to
sign a confession, one passage of which required
that he admit to the crime of "a hostile attitude to
Comrade Burchett"!
Several POWs testified that Burchett had ap-
peared at their camp wearing a Chinese military
uniform.
Australian government records seen by Prof.
Manne report U.S. intelligence as quoting a Norti.
Korean -3efecting oficer as saying Burchett
-worked directly &d-the-orders of Gen. Chung San
Man of the North Korean Foreign Ministry. The
same defector sat many stories attributed to Bur-
chett had in fact been composed in the North
Korean Ministry of Culture and Propaganda.
Burchett and the. British Communist journalist
Alan Winnington practiced manipulation of the
Western reporters covering the peace talks at Pan-
munjom. In a letter to his father Burchett wrote:
"Today when POW lists were released, most of the
American press were virtually crawling on their
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hands and knees on the road to us, begging for
crumbs of information. We were in the lovely posi-
tion of ignoring all those who had tried to injure us
and handed priceless information to the few who
had written honestly about the talks."
An American intelligence study of the role of
Burchett and Winnington, in the Australian gov-
ernment archives, concluded the two were
"primarily. responsible for the preparation of
Chinese propaganda for U.N. prisoners an
worked actively with English-speaking prisoners to
try to persuade them to accept communism and
betray their own countries." .
Burchett's private papers in Melbourne show he
even received war medals from the North Koreans.
He wrote his father of one war medal:. "It was
pinned on rrty breast, alongside two others, by the
country's vice-president.... Premier Kim 11 Sung
was very nice to me, greeted me as `an old Com-
rade in arms.'
Manne finds in the Australian government
records.that the Australian authorities worked
actively to- prepare treason charges against
Burchett, but of course he evaded these, stay-
ing away from countries from which he might
be extradited to stand trial - until after two
decades the political will to prosecute him.in
his homeland had dissipated.
Burchett spent time in Moscow after the Korean
War and according to Yuri Krotkov, a KGB officer
(who later defected to the U.S.), the Australian`
journalist said he had long been-a member of the
Australian Communist party but was "an illegal"
or underground member. He told Krotkov he had
been "paid by the Chinese Communist party"
while working in China and that he had close rela-
tions with Chou En-lai.
In Vietnam he had been given a house, car,
secretary and was "equipped very beautifully." He
wanted the same from the Soviets. After a hitch
due to a personnel change in the KGB, and mis-
laying of files, Burchett was brought aboard the
Soviet service, said Krotkov, and worked "under
the overall direction of KGB Col. Barsegov, who
ran the section of the KGB concerned with foreign
correspondents." Krotkov said in Senate testi-
mony the KGB gave Burchett a good apartment
"and, well, I guess, necessary money.
Burchett's time in Moscow led him to drink
"like a fish," according to a Novosti official
quoted by fellow journalist Dennis Warner. Bur-
chett moved in 1962 to Vietnam to work on behalf'
of the "war of national liberation" in, the south
and in the 13 years before Hanoi's tanks crashed
through the fence of the presidential palace in
Saigon, published seven books, several films ana a
vast wordage of newspaper and magazine writing
in support of the Communist cause.
Scholar Robert Manne writes that from the be-
ginning Hanoi understood the importance f the
"struggle for the hearts and minds of the Am ican
and Western publics." Propaganda was critie~il to
their war effort and Marine says that "Wilfred -
Burchett's role was second to none." He was b en-
tral to the campaign to create a fraudulent image of
the National Liberation Front as an indigenous
southern movement, independen4 of Hanoi, na-
tionalist, not Communist, a respo se to repression
and injustice and genocidal foreign intervention
from the imperialist U.S.A.
Burehett may have been a keylNorth Viet- I
namese operator in the recruitment to the
Hanoi fine of such personalities as Jane Fonda,
Noam Chomsky and Benjamin Spock. We do
know that all three were prominent sponsors of
his highly publicized and very political 60th
birthday celebration. But his most important
work was with journalists. He says in his own
memoirs that he befriended CBS reporter
Charles CoWngwood, even -managing to get
himself employed for awhile as a special con-
sultant with CBS. But he did best of all with
the New York Times.
Burchett was the Vietnamese Communist
authorities' handler of Western newsmen with the
mission of manipulating them into echoing the par-
ty line. Some seem to have been mighty manipul-
able! - -
The private papers in Melbourne show that Bur-
chett, in correspondence with his father and son in
Australia, gloated about his successful use of New
York Times correspondent Harrison Salisbury. He
quoted a letter he received afterward from Salis-
bury as saying "I am deeply grateful to you for the
aid and assistance..." while Salisbury visited
North Vietnam.
His son speculated in a letter that Salisbury had
thoroughly embraced the same points as Burchett,
and Burchett replied, "Your suspicions were quite
correct ... but that is not a thing to talk about. The
main thing is the result. As you said, Harrison said
what I have been saying for a long time but it is
more important -that it is said in the New York
Times."
"
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Salisbury wrote a panegyrical introduction for
Burchett's memoirs published by, yes, New York
Times Books in.1981 (At the Barricades: Forty
Years on the Cutting Edge of History), saying of
this Communist operative, he was an "individual-
ist," a "humanist," an "iconoclast," one who
"believes in the underdog," with "sympathies...
toward the cause of struggling, backward, emerg-
ing nationalist regimes."
In the New. York Times Review of Books,
Thomas Powers described Burchett as. a man of
"uncommon honesty." The Times, like other.
Western newspapers, regularly ran Burchett's
writings, often identifying him merely as "an Aus-
. tralian journalist," sometimes calling him
"left-wing," but usually treating him as an-objec-
tive reporter.. and. commentator.
After spending time on Bardhett's personal
papers in Melbourne and reviewing government
documents, Prof. Manne writes: "To describe
Burchett as an objective and honest reporter... is
the equivalent of calling Julius Streicher a com-
mentator on' German-Jewish affairs." .
He concludes: "In giving aid and comfort to the
enemies of his country at time of war, Burchett was
in the deepest sense of the word a traitor.... Bur-
chett broke all ties of faith and community with his
countrymen."
Mr. Samuel is an Australian correspondent now residing in
1i'ashington. He was co-editor of the journal Vietnam Digest
and a reporter in Vietnam during the war. He has followed
critically the career of his fellow.countryman and 'journalist "
for 20 years. and indeed wrote the article 14 years ago against
Burchett that drew the celebrated and unsuccessful libel suit in
Sydney.' He wishes to acknowledge drawing heavily here on a
long article that has- just appeared in Sydney in Quadrant
magazine on Burchett, drawing on his private papers-and writ-
ten by Robert Manne, and also on Stephen Morris' "A Scan-
dalous Journalistic Career" in Commentary. November 1981.
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^.*;;iCLEAP R D
ON PAGE
WASHINGTON TIMES
20 September 1985
Nkomati: down the drain.
The foundations of the State Department's
program for "stability" (that goal of goals) in
southern Africa has been a wooed-away
Mozambique and a constructively-engaged
.South Africa, and the cement securing these
foundations was the Nkomati accord, by
which South Africa and Mozambique agreed
to stop supporting each other's internal guer-
rilla movements. Well, the State Department
is now sitting with the broken pieces of that
accord in its lap - just in time for Mozam-
bican President Machel's visit, too.
In response to charges by Mn Machel,
South African Foreign Minister Pik Botha
has admitted that his country provided aid to
Renamo (Resistencia Nacional Moram-
bicana) even after Nkomati, by helping it
build an airstrip and maintain radio commu-
nications, and by odd favors such as
transporting resistance leaders into Mozam-
bique in South African subs. The question of
arms aid is still unresolved. Also still
unresolved is the question of whether Mr.
Machel continues to harbor the African
National Congress, as Mr. Botha asserts he
does.
This development is a considerable loss of
credibility for the State Department, which
urged the Nkomati accord on South Africa;
also for Mr. Botha, who became a forthright
spokesman for the Nkomati arrangement,
and who has urged visiting American con-
servatives to embrace the State Department
policy of embracing Mr. Machel.
As for Renamo, the State Department
charge that it is not "indigenous" is
incredible, no matter who aids its movement.
The poverty and tyranny which Mozambique
suffPrs are such as to cause man-Mozam-
hicans to join the rebels. and to suffer the
hardships caused by Renamo activities such
as knocking down power pylons. All possibil-
ity of change is cause for hope. The
grapevine has it that Rhodesian intelligence
gave Renamo a leg up back when opposition
to Mr. Machel was just beginning to
s~vstalize. But Rhodesian and South African
aid do not explain Renamo's obvious plenty
in terms of one essential resource: men will-
ing to fight.
Renamo ought not to be so reticent about
its alleged past sources of help. If the over-
throw of Samora Machel happens to suit the
purposes of certain objectionable regimes,
Renamo has every right to turn this to its
advantage; guilt by association is supposed
to be out. Renamo's stated goals are an end to
Machel's Marxist tyranny, denationalization,
and multiparty democracy. An awful lot of
Mozambicans seem willing to take a chance
on them.
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